During our early engagement period an initial equalities analysis and a deprivation analysis were undertaken by specialist independent consultancies to understand which protected characteristic groups may be affected by any potential changes to services.
As well as all of our public engagement work, we have done additional targeted engagement work with those protected groups and deprived communities. We want to better understand any potential positive or negative impacts and also look at the mitigations the CCGs may need to put in place, so these communities are not disadvantaged or dis-proportionately impacted.
The feedback was secured by way of focus groups commissioned through Healthwatch, engagement by the programme with local community and voluntary groups, and discussion workshops independently facilitated by a specialist engagement consultancy.
The findings from the Healthwatch engagement with equalities groups is now available on their websites and can be accessed below: